I believe the first time I heard of Grofers, “hyper-local” was the latest buzzword in town, competing with the likes of BigBasket, for grocery delivery.
8 years later, not much has changed except it’s blinkit now & the new buzzword is “Q-commerce”.
My first reaction to hearing about the 10-minute delivery was disbelief.
How does anything get done in 10 minutes?
But a quick search for “10-minute delivery” shows it’s not something new.
In fact, many startups including DoorDash, UberEats, Deliveroo (backed up Amazon) & Zepto have either already adopted it, or are very close to it.
So, maybe it can be done. Blinkit isn’t claiming the impossible here.
A while back their founder defended this move stating they have a dark store every two KM and their stores can pack within 2.5 minutes.
Honestly, I am not going to argue logistics with a firm that has been stating the importance of building strong logistics since 2014.
But, what I can take away from this are some lessons in brand strategy.
While it’s a crowded space in the west, 10-minute delivery is offered only by two startups in India. This immediately divides the market into two segments: The ones who can deliver in 10 minutes and those who can’t.
The past 10 years are enough evidence that if anything that works in the US, it's just a matter of time before it's adopted in India. And if that’s the case this time around, blinkit definitely is one of the first movers in this category.
So far so good.
Does this claim differentiate them?
Yes.
Can they sustain this?
They claim they can do 90% of their deliveries in 15 minutes even if their riders rode under 10KMPH. So, maybe they can.
Is it relevant?
Yes, anything that saves time for users, is going to be relevant.
And for me, that sounds like they are onto something here.
But in all this rebranding news, I really wished Grofers had the right to the name ‘Quikr’.
Grofers is Quikr now, would have made a nice headline.
The author of this article doesn’t advocate for faster deliveries or stressed riders. He currently stays in Kerala where the only way to get same-day delivery is by calling the local store & has made peace with it.
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